Biography

Fionnula Flanagan

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Fionnula Flanagan was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. From an early age she grew up speaking both English and Irish on a daily basis. Her parents weren't native Irish speakers but wanted Fionnula and her four siblings to learn the language. Her mother used to say, "A nation without a language is a nation without a soul". Fionnula has said she will be forever grateful to them for that. She was educated at the Abbey Theatre School in Dublin and in Switzerland. She moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and lives with her husband, psychiatrist Dr. Garrett O'Connor, in Beverly Hills. Of her enormous body of work, including stage, television and film, she might be most well-known for James Joyce's Women (1985), in which she plays six different women who had a profound influence on James Joyce's life. Besides giving an award-winning performance, she also wrote, adapted and produced the piece for the stage, and subsequently as a feature film. She believes Joyce is the most important writer in the English language, most notably for "Ulysses", "Finnegan's Wake" and "The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man". When she was growing up she thought the much lauded author was a good friend of her parents, because they were always saying, "Joyce said this, Joyce said that". When she was finally old enough to read Joyce for herself, the characters were like old friends.
- IMDb mini biography by: A. Nonymous

Is an accomplished violinist, a talent she used in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Inheritance", in which her character plays violin with Data, her android "son".
After moving to the United States to work in theater in the 1960s, she met and married Dr. Garrett O'Connor, the cousin of actor Carroll O'Connor.
Studied languages in Switzerland at the Universite de Fribourg and worked as an interpreter and translator in Italy.
In her youth, she was a favorite to play James Joyce's controversial Molly Bloom, a character that created quite a sexual stir on stage in New York.
Daughter of a veteran Irish nationalist who also fought in the Spanish Civil War.

I'm Irish and always will be, but America has taught me so much. Maybe it's here in the U.S. that we find a healing, for in the broader melting pot we get to look at some of these self-destructive attributes that we bring to bear upon our own quarrels and begin to solve them in ways other than just splitting apart.
When I first came to Hollywood, I could not break into movies.
People think we are such great talkers, but there is so much silence in Ireland about certain issues.
I think Irish women are strong as horses, incredibly loyal and for the most part, funny, witty, bright and optimistic in the face of devastating reality.
The image of Ireland is projected as a male image in the acting world, similar to the way that the word of Ireland is male dominated.

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